Читать книгу The Mystery of Murray Davenport - Robert Neilson Stephens - Страница 5

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Two days later, toward the close of a sunny afternoon, Mr. Thomas Larcher was admitted by a lazy negro to an old brown-stone-front house half-way between Madison and Fourth Avenues, and directed to the third story back, whither he was left to find his way unaccompanied. Running up the dark stairs swiftly, with his thoughts in advance of his body, he suddenly checked himself, uncertain as to which floor he had attained. At a hazard, he knocked on the door at the back of the dim, narrow passage he was in. He heard slow steps upon the carpet, the door opened, and a man slightly taller, thinner, and older than himself peered out.

“Pardon me, I may have mistaken the floor,” said Larcher. “I'm looking for Mr. Murray Davenport.”

“'Myself and misery know the man,'” replied the other, with quiet indifference, in a gloomy but not unpleasing voice, and stepped back to allow his visitor's entrance.

A little disconcerted at being received with a quotation, and one of such import—the more so as it came from the speaker's lips so naturally and with perfect carelessness of what effect it might produce on a stranger—Larcher stepped into the room. The carpet, the wall-paper, the upholstery of the arm-chair, the cover of the small iron bed in one corner, that of the small upright piano in another, and that of the table which stood between the two windows and evidently served as a desk, were all of advanced age, but cleanliness and neatness prevailed. The same was to be said of the man's attire, his coat being an old gray-black garment of the square-cut “sack” or “lounge” shape. Books filled the mantel, the flat top of a trunk, that of the piano, and much of the table, which held also a drawing-board, pads of drawing and manuscript paper, and the paraphernalia for executing upon both. Tacked on the walls, and standing about on top of books and elsewhere, were water-colors, drawings in half-tone, and pen-and-ink sketches, many unfinished, besides a few photographs of celebrated paintings and statues. But long before he had sought more than the most general impression of these contents of the room, Larcher had bent all his observation upon their possessor.

The man's face was thoughtful and melancholy, and handsome only by these and kindred qualities. Long and fairly regular, with a nose distinguished by a slight hump of the bridge, its single claim to beauty of form was in the distinctness of its lines. The complexion was colorless but clear, the face being all smooth shaven. The slightly haggard eyes were gray, rather of a plain and honest than a brilliant character, save for a tiny light that burned far in their depths. The forehead was ample and smooth, as far as could be seen, for rather longish brown hair hung over it, with a negligent, sullen effect. The general expression was of an odd painwearied dismalness, curiously warmed by the remnant of an unquenchable humor.

“This letter from Mr. Rogers will explain itself,” said Larcher, handing it.

“Mr. Rogers?” inquired Murray Davenport.

“Editor of the Avenue Magazine.”

Looking surprised, Davenport opened and read the letter; then, without diminution of his surprise, he asked Larcher to sit down, and himself took a chair before the table.

“I'm glad to meet you, Mr. Larcher,” he said, conventionally; then, with a change to informality, “I'm rather mystified to know why Mr. Rogers, or any editor, for that matter, should offer work to me. I never had any offered me before.”

“Oh, but I've seen some of your work,” contradicted Larcher. “The illustrations to a story called 'A Heart in Peril.'”

“That wasn't offered me; I begged for it,” said Davenport, quietly.

“Well, in any case, it was seen and admired, and consequently you were recommended to Mr. Rogers, who thought you might like to illustrate this stuff of mine,” and Larcher brought forth the typewritten manuscript from under his coat.

“It's so unprecedented,” resumed Davenport, in his leisurely, reflective way of speaking. “I can scarcely help thinking there must be some mistake.”

“But you are the Murray Davenport that illustrated the 'Heart in Peril' story?”

“Yes; I'm the only Murray Davenport I know of; but an offer of work to me—”

“Oh, there's nothing extraordinary about that. Editors often seek out new illustrators they hear of.”

“Oh, I know all about that. You don't quite understand. I say, an offer to me—an offer unsolicited, unsought, coming like money found, like a gift from the gods. Such a thing belongs to what is commonly called good luck. Now, good luck is a thing that never by any chance has fallen to me before; never from the beginning of things to the present. So, in spite of my senses, I'm naturally a bit incredulous in this case.” This was said with perfect seriousness, but without any feeling.

Larcher smiled. “Well, I hope your incredulity won't make you refuse to do the pictures.”

“Oh, no,” returned Davenport, indolently. “I won't refuse. I'll accept the commission with pleasure—a certain amount of pleasure, that is. There was a time when I should have danced a break-down for joy, probably, at this opportunity. But a piece of good luck, strange as it is to me, doesn't matter now. Still, as it has visited me at last, I'll receive it politely. In as much as I have plenty of time for this work, and as Mr. Rogers seems to wish me to do it, I should be churlish if I declined. The money too, is an object—I won't conceal that fact. To think of a chance to earn a little money, coming my way without the slightest effort on my part! You look substantial, Mr. Larcher, but I'm still tempted to think this is all a dream.”

Larcher laughed. “Well, as to effort,” said he, “I don't think I should be here now with that accepted manuscript for you to illustrate, if I hadn't taken a good deal of pains to press my work on the attention of editors.”

“Oh, I don't mean to say that your prosperity, and other men's, is due to having good things thrust upon you in this way. But if you do owe all to your own work, at least your work does bring a fair amount of reward, your efforts are in a fair measure successful. But not so with me. The greatest fortune I could ever have asked would have been that my pains should bring their reasonable price, as other men's have done. Therefore, this extreme case of good luck, small as it is, is the more to be wondered at. The best a man has a right to ask is freedom from what people call habitual bad luck. That's an immunity I've never had. My labors have been always banned—except when the work has masqueraded as some other man's. In that case they have been blessed. It will seem strange to you, Mr. Larcher, but whatever I've done in my own name has met with wretched pay and no recognition, while work of mine, no better, when passed off as another man's, has won golden rewards—for him—in money and reputation.”

“It does seem strange,” admitted Larcher.

“What can account for it?”

“Do you know what a 'Jonah' is, in the speech of the vulgar?”

“Yes; certainly.”

“Well, people have got me tagged with that name. I bring ill luck to enterprises I'm concerned in, they say. That's a fatal reputation, Mr. Larcher. It wasn't deserved in the beginning, but now that I have it, see how the reputation itself is the cause of the apparent ill luck. Take this thing, for instance.” He held up a sheet of music paper, whereon he had evidently been writing before Larcher's arrival. “A song, supposed to be sentimental. As the idea is somewhat novel, the words happy, and the tune rather quaint, I shall probably get a publisher for it, who will offer me the lowest royalty. What then? Its fame and sale—or whether it shall have any—will depend entirely on what advertising it gets from being sung by professional singers. I have taken the precaution to submit the idea and the air to a favorite of the music halls, and he has promised to sing it. Now, if he sang it on the most auspicious occasion, making it the second or third song of his turn, having it announced with a flourish on the programme, and putting his best voice and style into it, it would have a chance of popularity. Other singers would want it, it would be whistled around, and thousands of copies sold. But will he do that?”

“I don't see why he shouldn't,” said Larcher.

“Oh, but he knows why. He remembers I am a Jonah. What comes from me carries ill luck. He'll sing the song, yes, but he won't hazard any auspicious occasion on it. He'll use it as a means of stopping encores when he's tired of them; he'll sing it hurriedly and mechanically; he'll make nothing of it on the programme; he'll hide the name of the author, for fear by the association of the names some of my Jonahship might extend to him. So, you see, bad luck will attend my song; so, you see, the name of bad luck brings bad luck. Not that there is really such a thing as luck. Everything that occurs has a cause, an infinite line of causes. But a man's success or failure is due partly to causes outside of his control, often outside of his ken. As, for instance, a sudden change of weather may defeat a clever general, and thrust victory upon his incompetent adversary. Now when these outside causes are adverse, and prevail, we say a man has bad luck. When they favor, and prevail, he has good luck. It was a rapid succession of failures, due partly to folly and carelessness of my own, I admit, but partly to a run of adverse conjunctures far outside my sphere of influence, that got me my unlucky name in the circles where I hunt a living. And now you are warned, Mr. Larcher. Do you think you are safe in having my work associated with yours, as Mr. Rogers proposes? It isn't too late to draw back.”

Whether the man still spoke seriously, Larcher could not exactly tell. Certainly the man's eyes were fixed on Larcher's face in a manner that made Larcher color as one detected. But his weakness had been for an instant only, and he rallied laughingly.

“Many thanks, but I'm not superstitious, Mr. Davenport. Anyhow, my article has been accepted, and nothing can increase or diminish the amount I'm to receive for it.”

“But consider the risk to your future career,” pursued Davenport, with a faint smile.

“Oh, I'll take the chances,” said Larcher, glad to treat the subject as a joke. “I don't suppose the author of 'A Heart in Peril,' for instance, has experienced hard luck as a result of your illustrating his story.”

“As a matter of fact,” replied Davenport, with a look of melancholy humor, “the last I heard of him, he had drunk himself into the hospital. But I believe he had begun to do that before I crossed his path. Well, I thank you for your hardihood, Mr. Larcher. As for the Avenue Magazine, it can afford a little bad luck.”

“Let us hope that the good luck of the magazine will spread to you, as a result of your contact with it.”

“Thank you; but it doesn't matter much, as things are. No; they are right; Murray Davenport is a marked name; marked for failure. You must know, Mr. Larcher, I'm not only a Jonah; I'm that other ludicrous figure in the world—a man with a grievance; a man with a complaint of injustice. Not that I ever air it; it's long since I learned better than that. I never speak of it, except in this casual way when it comes up apropos; but people still associate me with it, and tell newcomers about it, and find a moment's fun in it. And the man who is most hugely amused at it, and benevolently humors it, is the man who did me the wrong. For it's been a part of my fate that, in spite of the old injury, I should often work for his pay. When other resources fail, there's always he to fall back on; he always has some little matter I can be useful in. He poses then as my constant benefactor, my sure reliance in hard times. And so he is, in fact; though the fortune that enables him to be is built on the profits of the game he played at my expense. I mention it to you, Mr. Larcher, to forestall any other account, if you should happen to speak of me where my name is known. Please let nobody assure you, either that the wrong is an imaginary one, or that I still speak of it in a way to deserve the name of a man with a grievance.”

His composed, indifferent manner was true to his words. He spoke, indeed, as one to whom things mattered little, yet who, being originally of a social and communicative nature, talks on fluently to the first intelligent listener after a season of solitude. Larcher was keen to make the most of a mood so favorable to his own purpose in seeking the man's acquaintance.

“You may trust me to believe nobody but yourself, if the subject ever comes up in my presence,” said Larcher. “I can certainly testify to the cool, unimpassioned manner in which you speak of it.”

“I find little in life that's worth getting warm or impassioned about,” said Davenport, something half wearily, half contemptuously.

“Have you lost interest in the world to that extent?”

“In my present environment.”

“Oh, you can easily change that. Get into livelier surroundings.”

Davenport shook his head. “My immediate environment would still be the same; my memories, my body; 'this machine,' as Hamlet says; my old, tiresome, unsuccessful self.”

“But if you got about more among mankind—not that I know what your habits are at present, but I should imagine—” Larcher hesitated.

“You perceive I have the musty look of a solitary,” said Davenport. “That's true, of late. But as to getting about, 'man delights not me'—to fall back on Hamlet again—at least not from my present point of view.”

“'Nor woman neither'?” quoted Larcher, interrogatively.

“'No, nor woman neither,'” said Davenport slowly, a coldness coming upon his face. “I don't know what your experience may have been. We have only our own lights to go by; and mine have taught me to expect nothing from women. Fair-weather friends; creatures that must be amused, and are unscrupulous at whose cost or how great. One of their amusements is to be worshipped by a man; and to bring that about they will pretend love, with a pretence that would deceive the devil himself. The moment they are bored with the pastime, they will drop the pretence, and feel injured if the man complains. We take the beauty of their faces, the softness of their eyes, for the outward signs of tenderness and fidelity; and for those supposed qualities, and others which their looks seem to express, we love them. But they have not those qualities; they don't even know what it is that we love them for; they think it is for the outward beauty, and that that is enough. They don't even know what it is that we, misled by that outward softness, imagine is beyond; and when we are disappointed to find it isn't there, they wonder at us and blame us for inconstancy. The beautiful woman who could be what she looks—who could really contain what her beauty seems the token of—whose soul, in short, could come up to the promise of her face—there would be a creature! You'll think I've had bad luck in love, too, Mr. Larcher.”

Larcher was thinking, for the instant, about Edna Hill, and wondering

how near she might come to justifying Davenport's opinion of women. For

himself, though he found her bewitching, her prettiness had never seemed

the outward sign of excessive tenderness. He answered conventionally:

“Well, one would suppose so from your remarks. Of course, women like to be amused, I know. Perhaps we expect too much from them. 'Oh, woman in our hours of ease, Uncertain, coy, and hard to please, And variable as the shade By the light quivering aspen made.'

I've sometimes had reason to recall those lines.” Mr. Larcher sighed at

certain memories of Miss Hill's variableness. “But then, you know—

'When pain and anguish wring the brow,

A ministering angel them.'”

“I can't speak in regard to pain and anguish,” said Davenport. “I've experienced both, of course, but not so as to learn their effect on women. But suppose, if you can, a woman who should look kindly on an undeserving, but not ill-meaning, individual like myself. Suppose that, after a time, she happened to hear of the reputation of bad luck that clung to him. What would she do then?”

“Undertake to be his mascot, I suppose, and neutralize the evil influence,” replied Larcher, laughingly.

“Well, if I were to predict on my own experience, I should say she would take flight as fast as she could, to avoid falling under the evil influence herself. The man would never hear of her again, and she would doubtless live happy ever after.”

For the first time in the conversation, Davenport sighed, and the faintest cloud of bitterness showed for a moment on his face.

“And the man, perhaps, would 'bury himself in his books,'” said Larcher, looking around the room; he made show to treat the subject gaily, lest he might betray his inquisitive purpose.

“Yes, to some extent, though the business of making a bare living takes up a good deal of time. You observe the signs of various occupations here. I have amused myself a little in science, too—you see the cabinet over there. I studied medicine once, and know a little about surgery, but I wasn't fitted—or didn't care—to follow that profession in a money-making way.”

“You are exceedingly versatile.”

“Little my versatility has profited me. Which reminds me of business. When are these illustrations to be ready, Mr. Larcher? And how many are wanted? I'm afraid I've been wasting your time.”

In their brief talk about the task, Larcher, with the private design of better acquaintance, arranged that he should accompany the artist to certain riverside localities described in the text. Business details settled, Larcher observed that it was about dinnertime, and asked:

“Have you any engagement for dining?”

“No,” said Davenport, with a faint smile at the notion.

“Then you must dine with me. I hate to eat alone.”

“Thank you, I should be pleased. That is to say—it depends on where you dine.”

“Wherever you like. I dine at restaurants, and I'm not faithful to any particular one.”

“I prefer to dine as Addison preferred—on one or two good things well cooked, and no more. Toiling through a ten-course table d'hôte menu is really too wearisome—even to a man who is used to weariness.”

“Well, I know a place—Giffen's chop-house—that will just suit you. As a friend of mine, Barry Tompkins, says, it's a place where you get an unsurpassable English mutton-chop, a perfect baked potato, a mug of delicious ale, and afterward a cup of unexceptionable coffee. He says that, when you've finished, you've dined as simply as a philosopher and better than most kings; and the whole thing comes to forty-five cents.”

“I know the place, and your friend is quite right.”

Davenport took up a soft felt hat and a plain stick with a curved handle. When the young men emerged from the gloomy hallway to the street, which in that part was beginning to be shabby, the street lights were already heralding the dusk. The two hastened from the region of deteriorating respectability to the grandiose quarter westward, and thence to Broadway and the clang of car gongs. The human crowd was hurrying to dinner.

“What a poem a man might write about Broadway at evening!” remarked Larcher.

Davenport replied by quoting, without much interest:

'The shadows lay along Broadway, 'Twas near the twilight tide—And slowly there a lady fair Was walking in her pride.'

“Poe praised those lines,” he added. “But it was a different Broadway that Willis wrote them about.”

“Yes,” said Larcher, “but in spite of the skyscrapers and the incongruities, I love the old street. Don't you?”

“I used to,” said Davenport, with a listlessness that silenced Larcher, who fell into conjecture of its cause. Was it the effect of many failures? Or had it some particular source? What part in its origin had been played by the woman to whose fickleness the man had briefly alluded? And, finally, had the story behind it anything to do with Edna Hill's reasons for seeking information?

Pondering these questions, Larcher found himself at the entrance to the chosen dining-place. It was a low, old-fashioned doorway, on a level with the sidewalk, a little distance off Broadway. They were just about to enter, when they heard Davenport's name called out in a nasal, overbearing voice. A look of displeasure crossed Davenport's brow, as both young men turned around. A tall, broad man, with a coarse, red face; a man with hard, glaring eyes and a heavy black mustache; a man who had intruded into a frock coat and high silk hat, and who wore a large diamond in his tie; a man who swung his arms and used plenty of the surrounding space in walking, as if greedy of it—this man came across the street, and, with an air of proprietorship, claimed Murray Davenport's attention.